SHOTLIST:

- BRUSSELS, BELGIUM (SEPTEMBER 3, 2025) (ANADOLU - ACCESS ALL)

1. INTERVIEW WITH MAXIME PREVOT, BELGIUM’S DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER AND FOREIGN MINISTER (English)
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - SEPTEMBER 3: Maxime Prevot, Belgium’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister, said on Tuesday that his country’s decision to recognize the state of Palestine is meant “to send a strong diplomatic signal” at the UN General Assembly in New York, set to start later this month.

Speaking to Anadolu, Prevot expressed his satisfaction following the agreement reached with coalition partners to recognize the state of Palestine.

“I'm satisfied, because I think that we had for moral reasons, but also for legal ones, the obligation to conclude an agreement within the Belgian coalition, and also to send a strong signal to Israel, in order to explain that the government absolutely needs to stop the expansion of the illegal settlements and to stop cutting off all the humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people,” he said.

Prevot said the current attitude of the Israeli government placing the two-state solution in jeopardy was a driver in their decision-making process.

“If we want a solution with two states, as the name mentions, we need two states. And now, with the attitude of the Israeli government, the possibility of having a two-state solution is in danger. It's why we've decided to recognize the state of Palestine in order to send a strong diplomatic signal in New York in the coming weeks, thanks to the initiative of Saudi Arabia and France,” he said.

Prevot said that this step was important “to politically indicate that we refuse to have a kind of solution with only one state.”

He added, however, that the Belgian government will operationalize "this recognition on an administrative and legal basis later, when the different hostages will be released and Hamas (is) no more involved in the management in the governance of Palestine” so as to “avoid to give a kind of reward to the terrorist group Hamas.”



- ‘We can consider this a genocide’

While stating that this is not the official statement of the Belgian government and not a particularly common opinion within the five different parties and sensitivities of the country’s ruling coalition, Prevot added that, according to him and most of his country’s diplomats, “the situation on the ground is really terrible, and we can consider this a genocide.”

It is not up to politicians to decide whether or not the current situation in Gaza constitutes a genocide but a responsibility of judicial authorities, chiefly the International Court of Justice, he said.



- Need for EU consensus

Belgium’s top diplomat acknowledged that it was “crystal clear” that there have been problems within the EU in finding and achieving common decisions related to sanctions to Israel, with “several countries which prefer not to take sanctions for different reasons.”

“I think that we need to mobilize all the EU countries in order to enhance the level of reaction, because it's crystal clear that with no strong statements and strong decisions, the credibility of the foreign policy of the EU is collapsing. We absolutely need to have the capability all together as the EU to send clear messages,” he said.